Mousehunt part 1

our war with rodents in the home

Growing up, my family practically made mouse-catching a sport. My parents researched the best baits and traps, even making a few themselves, and the entire house seemed to be lined with small contraptions. During the winter, my younger brothers were in charge of checking the mousetraps every morning and disposing of any corpses. At night, I’d lie awake, listening to the sound of scratching in the wall behind my head as well as in the ceiling above me. Not only were we at war with mice in our old tin-roofed cabin, but snakes and other critters as well. Spring was welcome primarily as a sign of truce, as everything wild would soon venture out to warmth of the sun, and we’d have our house to ourselves again.

That being said, I very rarely saw mice with my own eyes while they were alive (except for the sad occasion when one was trapped by only a leg). These country-mice wisely stayed hidden during the day and only came out when we were all asleep. However, this first winter in the city has proven different. Our building, comprised of multiple apartments, seemed infested with another breed of rodent entirely. Not rats, thankfully (I’ve never dealt with those) but city-mice. They were inexplicably bold, running across the floors in broad daylight, chewing through cardboard boxes to ruin whole bags of rice and potatoes, and barely frightened by our attempts to catch them!

Mo declared war immediately. Many nights, he was woken by a squeaking sound near his head, or loud munching in the kitchen. He would don his “stomping shoes” and, wielding a broomstick, send mice running in back to their holes, which we sequentially stuffed with metal sponges. The kind landlady paid for as many traps as we needed, but none of them seemed to work. It was Mo’s personal war, and it would be won by flesh and blood, manual labor, not mechanical gadgets or gismos.

Yet, many battles were lost. Mo often returned to sleep empty handed. The mice seemed to sense his indignation. They taunted him, running two and fro, cleverly snatching food from the claws of the traps without setting them off. They’d hide under furniture and scamper across our feet. One night, Mo and I sat on the couch together talking, and a mouse boldly climbed up to the head rest and ran across, directly behind our heads, and down the other side. “Did you see that?!” I gasped. I’d seen a blur of grey fur fly past.

“No,” Mo said calmly, “but I felt it’s breeze on my neck.”